Of the simple pleasures in life, few compare to starting your day with a warm muffin fresh out of the oven. It’s basically an excuse to eat cake for breakfast but more socially acceptable thanks to a few token handfuls of blueberries and a sprinkling of oats on top. Call it breakfast, call it cake, no matter how you slice or dice it, these blueberry muffins with streusel are dang good.

After some tinkering here and there and a few dozen muffins that weren’t quite right, we finally landed on our perfect version of a blueberry muffin with streusel. The ideal butter-to-flour ratio makes for a tender crumb, while the sour cream and buttermilk add a bit of tang that pairs so well with the blueberries. We love a substantial amount of blueberries in our muffins to get a burst of flavor in every bite but feel free to use a few less berries if that’s more your style. Yes, you can definitely use frozen blueberries. Be sure to fold them very gently into the batter still frozen to help prevent bluish-purple streaks in your muffins.

The crowning jewel (both literally and figuratively) for these muffins is definitely the homemade oat streusel. We’ve yet to meet an instance where oats + sugar was a bad thing, and the textural interest the streusel provides is so welcome here. While it is an extra step and one more dirty bowl, the rest of the muffins are so low-fuss, always spring for the streusel.

Tips for the Best Blueberry Muffins with Streusel

It is entirely possible to make a bakery-worthy muffin from your very own home kitchen. Here are a few of our best tips:

  1. Don’t overmix your batter. When combining the wet and dry ingredients, mix just until combined. It’s even ok to see a few streaks of flour since those will finish incorporating when the blueberries get folded in. Overmixing encourages the development of gluten, which results in a tough, flat muffin. And we all know “muffins” and “tough” don’t belong in the same sentence.
  2. Leaveners matter. Baking powder is a chemical leavener that relies on, well, chemistry to give rise to baked goods. When baking powder is exposed to oxygen and humidity in the air, the chemical components deteriorate, “using up” their leavening power. Make sure your baking powder has been purchased within the past six months to ensure it’s still active and can give your muffins that beautiful rise.
  3. Don’t overfill your tin. Each muffin cup should be no more than 2/3 full of batter. The tin provides structural support to the muffin as it’s baking. If it’s too full, the batter has nowhere to climb and will collapse.
  4. Check early for doneness. Overbaking muffins is a surefire way to dry muffins. Since ovens vary so much, check for doneness a few minutes before the minimum suggested bake time is up. You’ll know your muffins are done (or close to being done) when you can smell them and a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs attached. 

More Delicious Baked Goods

Brooke Eliason
Servings: 12 servings
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Call it breakfast, call it cake, no matter how you slice or dice it, these blueberry muffins with streusel are dang good.

Ingredients 

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

  • 8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs, room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ½ cup sour cream
  • ¼ cup buttermilk
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 Tablespoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • cups blueberries, fresh or frozen, do not thaw*

OAT STREUSEL

  • 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
  • ½ cup flour
  • ¼ cup rolled oats
  • cup brown sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with 12 paper liners and set aside.
  • In a large bowl whisk together the melted butter and sugar until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk together again until smooth. Add the sour cream and buttermilk, and mix again until smooth. Add all of the dry ingredients to the bowl at once, including the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix until just combined. Fold in the blueberries with a spatula and set batter aside.
  • In a medium-sized bowl, combine all of the oat streusel topping ingredients until crumbly. Set aside.
  • Divide the batter evenly between cups, roughly one heaping ⅓ cup of batter (you can use a size 16 cookie scoop also). Sprinkle each cup of muffin batter with roughly 1 Tablespoon of the streusel topping. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs attached.

Equipment

  • 12 cup muffin pan
  • 12 muffin paper liners

Notes

*Fresh blueberries are best for this recipe but you can definitely use frozen blueberries in the off season or in a pinch. Be aware that the often accumulated juices that accompany frozen berries will typically color the rest of your batter (they will still taste amazing).

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